an economics scrapbook

The face of the river, in time, became a wonderful book . . . which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it had uttered them with a voice.
-- Mark Twain

One of my favorite commentators to listen to regarding the economy is trends forecaster Gerald Celente. This is not only because his predictions have often been eerily accurate, but because his satyrical Bronx attitude cuts right through the crap and leaves me laughing even in the face of bad economic news. He was recently interviewed by Matt Cooper of The Last Word, on Irish radio, and had plenty of attitude and insight to share regarding midterm elections, quantitative easing, multinational corporate takeover and the global economic crisis. I decided to transcribe the interview so as to more effectively share his words with my readership here at The Paper Boat. To experience the full impact of the interview, however, I recommend you indulge yourself in a few minutes of informative entertainment and actually listen to Celente speak at the link provided below.

An Interview With Gerald Celente on Irish Radio, November 3, 2010

MC: So the American midterm elections have been a massive success for the Republicans, a big blow for President Barack Obama, although Bill Clinton as well has had a similar experience in 1994 and it didn’t stop him from being reelected two years later. But who better to analyze things for us than an old favorite guest of ours here on The Last Word, the Chief Executive of the Trends Research Institute joining us from New York, Gerald Celente. Hello to you, Gerald.

GC: Hello, Matt.

MC: So, what do you reckon the political and indeed the economic consequences of the mid term elections are going to be?

GC: Nothing, and nothing.

MC: Okay.

GC: Yeah, it’s one criminal group replaced the others. The Gambino’s replaced the Bonnano’s. The Republicans replaced the Democrats. Nothing of any consequence is going to change. It seems as though Americans have, uh, Attention Deficit Disorder. Go back to 2006 midterm elections. The Democrats get swept in. They repudiate the Bush presidency and his congress under the guise that the Democrats in office are going to end those criminal operations called wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And what happens? They bring in Obama later on and what does he do? He… he increased the troop strength into Afghanistan into 70,000 more troops. It’s the two-headed one party system. The Wall Street gang is in control of the White House. This is all just show. They’re gonna make the big story about tax breaks for the filthy rich and whether or not they’re going to gut the already gutless Obamacare, and whether or not they’re going to balance the budget, and in the meantime the big story today, Matt, is how much money is the Federal Reserve going to dump into the markets? You know, that… that, uh, digital money not worth the paper it’s not printed on? That’s what everyone’s really waiting for. The rest of this is just a side show.

MC: Well, indeed. Talk to us about this, what they call quantitative easing. Can you explain what’s involved in this and what it’s supposed to do?

GC: Well, it’s white shoe boy language, “quantitative easing.” All it is is dumping more money into the financial system so that big banks can borrow at zero, continue to do their speculation and “investments” (with a quote- “investments” is really, you know, just gambling), and charging people high interest rates in return so they can continue to make profits. The global economy is in collapse. I don’t have to tell you folks over there in Ireland… you know one of the pictures we have in our Trends Journal, the Autumn Edition, Is that… that cement truck crashing through the gates of the Irish Parliament. They’re doing this around the world. The central banks are dumping money into the economies to keep the big boys afloat. They call it “austerity measures.” It’s people getting taxed more, getting less benefits, losing jobs, so they can bail out the guys that made bad bets with bonds. It’s as simple as that, and they’re doing the same thing here.

MC: What’s the alternative? There are plenty of people in this country who’d like to say “Burn the bondholders. Let’s not repay them the money that they lent recklessly to our banks and which our state took responsibility for. Let’s restructure the amount of debt that we have to repay- our national debt.” But the problem is, we still need to borrow it. Will we be able to borrow it from somewhere else if we don’t repay these guys?

GC: Of course they will. Why should these guys not get burnt? You know what gets me mad? All my life I hear about free markets and capitalism, until the big guys start taking losses and then they come out with this load of bologna that “Oh, they’re too big to fail. If they fail then the world will come to an end.” No, no, capitalism then takes place. You know what the motto of the Trends Research Institute is?

“Break the chains, buy local and bank local.”

The only way the people are going to make it is to take the power away from the power brokers, and that’s all these politicians are. What a disgusting spectacle. From that clown Cowen you got over there to Sarkozy, to Berlusconi, to Obama, Bush, Clinton… you go down the line, you know who these people are? These are the same people you couldn’t stand in high school and college that wanted to become the head of the, you know, class president or head of the student council and they always used to suck their way up and brown nose to everybody else so they could get what they want. Now they’re telling us what to do. They don’t have a clue. If you watch the election results last night in the US, yeah, it was a disgusting… You hear the guy saying the same things. “We’re gonna balance the budget and we’re gonna free up the.. the… the credit lines so that small business could again start borrowing and expand.” Nah, one thing has nothing to do with another. It’s called globalization. They’ve taken all the good jobs and sent them to China along with the technology and the people have over borrowed because of the criminal activities of the banks by loaning the money at these ridiculously low rates with no… with no collateral, and now they want the people to bail out the banks.

MC: What’s the alternative? You tell us how we can get out of this mess, what we can do Gerald, please.

GC: Number one: you have to stop spending money you don’t have. You know, I’m old enough to remember when people didn’t buy things on credit. As a matter of fact, I remember in the U.K. when credit cards first came out, you were a loser if you used your credit card. It meant you didn’t have money. Buy only what you can afford and buy local. Build a local economy in every way. You know, whether it’s drinking all Irish booze, buying all Irish food you can, making Irish shoes, Irish shirts. Every country, every community has to support each other. The whole lie of globalization only helps out the multinationals, and these are the people that when they need austerity measures, that’s the one they’re really bailing out. I’m not nostalgic, so what I’m saying is let’s go back to a formula that really worked before. The whole World Trade Organization, NAFTA, globalization has crippled the working people. You take a nation of proud people that used to be merchants, they used to be craftspeople, artisans, manufacturers, and now… mom and pop businesses… and now what they’ve turned them into is service sector society. Now they’re clerks and cashiers. Service sector… servant… serf. When they bemoaned the beginning of industrialization, even in their wildest dreams… Blake would’ve never have imagined it to have degenerated into this.

MC: One final point though, Gerald. When we were ourselves alone here in this country, when we had trade barriers against the rest of the world where we thought we could be self-sufficient, it was a disaster for us. It was entering the European community, expanding our exports beyond Britain into Germany, France, the rest of Europe into the United States, that’s when we prospered. If we didn’t have the foreign multinationals in this country now we’d be completely bereft of jobs, bereft of exports, bereft of income. So, would that sort of protectionism not hurt us?

GC: Not that kind… I’m not talking about total protectionism. It’s not a level playing field. You know, go back to the Cold War days when you used to hear about those “Communist Chinese.” those “Red Chinese.” Guess what- it hasn’t changed. All the deal is, Matt, is that manufacturers have taken their business over to China, they get the product manufactured there, they ship it back and mark it up. In the meantime they sold the technology because the Chinese aren’t stupid. “If you’re gonna manufacture here, we want your technology, too.” That’s why they have the trains that are now the fastest in the world, whether it was Siemens, Hitachi or everybody else giving it to them. So what I’m saying is we don’t need the multinationals. We don’t need Kraft. We don’t need General Foods. We don’t need any of them. We don’t need Nestle. They’re cornering the market. And what we do need is more local manufacturers to be able to compete. It’s not a level playing field. I’m not a protectionist. I say open up the markets, but let’s call it what it is and if it… and so for us in the States I can say with full certainty that before NAFTA, before World Trade Organization, this country was the most egalitarian in the world and now the gap between the rich and the poor is the widest in the United States of any of the industrialized nations.

MC: Gerald Celente, as ever, it’s been great talking to you. Gerald is the chief executive of the Trends Research Institute.

Trends Research Institute
Gerald Celente Speaks with Matt Cooper on Irish Radio About the Global Economic Crisis
November 3, 2010 http://www.trendsresearch.com

Business InsiderMan Slams A Cement Mixer Into Irish Parliament Building As Austerity Protests Erupt Across Europe
Vincent Fernando
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2 Comments on “Beware the White Shoe Boys”

I would love to have heard Gerald’s Bronxese in this interview bouncing off Cooper’s. Yes, it all sounds solid. Where does one find a local bank? I suppose our credit union is the closest thing to a local bank?

Oh, you must hear the interview! The accents are great. Click on the top link at the base of the post, for Trends Research Institute, and it’ll take you right to it. It’s a short interview and well worth a listen.

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